Enduring Hostility: A Book Talk on the Making of America's Iran Policy

Nearly fifty years after the Iranian Revolution and creation of the Islamic Republic, tensions remain high between the United States and Iran, culminating in a U.S.- and Israeli-led war in Iran. Dalia Dassa Kaye’s timely new book, Enduring Hostilities, examines the roots of hostilities between the two countries and how U.S. policy over the past four decades has been shaped not only by differing ideologies between the two countries, but also by U.S. political perceptions at various points in time. Join Penn’s Middle East Center and Perry World House for an in-depth, thoughtful discussion on the U.S.-Iran relationship, the current state of the conflict between the two countries, and what lessons should be gleaned from nearly four decades of enduring hostilities.

Dr. Dalia Dassa Kaye is a senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and director of its Initiative on Regional Security Architectures. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dalia is an internationally recognized expert on geopolitics and Middle East policy. During her fifteen years at the RAND Corporation, Dalia served as a senior political scientist and the director of the Center of Middle East Public Policy.

She has received numerous awards and held previous positions at an array of research and public policy institutions, including as a Fulbright Schuman visiting scholar at Lund University, a fellow at the Wilson Center, an advisor at the Foreign Ministry of The Netherlands, an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at the George Washington University, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill.

She is a frequent public speaker and contributor to leading media outlets, including BBC, CNN, NPR, PBS, and Foreign Affairs. She is the author of dozens of articles and policy reports, as well as three books, including most recently Enduring Hostility: The Making of America’s Iran Policy (Stanford University Press, 2026).

Dalia holds her BA, MA, and PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Marie Harf comes to Penn with two decades of varied experience in the U.S. federal government, higher education, media, and politics. Previously she worked as senior advisor for strategic communications to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and deputy spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, as the foreign policy director on Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, and as a Middle East analyst and spokesperson at the Central Intelligence Agency. She has also held senior roles at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and for Congressman Seth Moulton’s political organization. Since 2017, Harf has been an on-air commentator for Fox News. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Indiana University with concentrations in Jewish Studies and Russian and Eastern European Studies, and a master’s degree in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia.

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